


Holtzmann in Love

by rayvanfox



Series: Busters in Love [1]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, Multi, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, everyone is gay and holtzmann is poly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 11:57:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7713997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayvanfox/pseuds/rayvanfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are a lot of feelings.<br/>And Holtzmann doesn't know what to do with them.<br/>When they get blurted out randomly, neither does anyone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holtzmann in Love

**Author's Note:**

> So many thanks to Bootsnblossoms for the beta!

Holtzmann had fucked up. 

Not with the power in the new and improved proton packs or the efficacy of the ghost trap or the nascent containment unit’s inner workings, thank Goddess, but with missing some vital information when it came to interpersonal relationships. And social cues. 

At that exact moment, standing in the lab with their packs still on their backs, sweaty and aching from a fierce fight with a nasty class three apparition, and as their adrenaline only now started to ebb, her team was struck still and staring at her like she’d grown two more heads. 

“What? What’d I do?” She tugged her goggles off to look more closely at each of them, trying to glean some hint from their shocked faces, but now they were schooling their expressions and glancing meaningfully at each other. Holtzmann’s heart rate kicked back up as she suddenly wished the floor would open up and swallow her whole. 

“I... I thought you knew... Haven’t I said... Didn’t you get the part where...” She took a clumsy half-step backwards and looked to Patty, who had opened her mouth as if to speak, though nothing was coming out. She was moving her weight from one foot to the other which was a bad sign. Holtzmann pointed to the door with the muzzle of her own gun and muttered, “Maybe I should just...”

“No, come on, baby. It’s fine. We’re fine. Right?” Patty turned to Erin and Abby, eyes wide and exaggerating her nod, as if to get them to follow suit. “There’s nothing wrong with what you said, it just took us by surprise, right?”

Abby had started nodding along with Patty, and was elbowing Erin, who was busying herself with taking off her pack, not looking at anyone. Abby soldiered bravely on. “Yeah, Holtzmann. Everything’s fine. We know what you meant. You were feeling celebratory, and we all feel like a family. And that’s important.”

“And some of us,” Erin started, clearing her throat before she could continue, “are freer with our emotions than others.”

“Freer, or gayer?” 

Holtzmann’s eyes grew comically wide when she realized it was Abby who had spoken. Erin cleared her throat again but said nothing. 

Patty came out with, “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with either one.” Holtzmann nodded fractionally at her in gratitude. Then she took a deep breath. 

Why did this having feelings shit always have to be so hard?

“You gals, uh... you already knew I was queer, right?” Holtzmann wasn’t sure her voice carried much past her own larynx, but she also wasn’t about to repeat her question. 

Abby, Goddess love her, nodded with a soft smile on her sweet lips. “Yeah. It’s pretty obvious. In a good way,” she hastened to add. 

“Yeah, I just didn’t know you were poly, sugar.” Patty gave Holtzmann a little nudge that felt surprisingly reassuring, given the circumstances. 

“I... yeah. About that,” Holtzmann hedged.

“Oh! You didn’t mean what you said.” Erin shrugged with a little self-conscious laugh. “Of course you didn’t. It was silly of us to think you did, because that would be absurd, right?” She looked at Abby, who was shaking her head slightly, trying to be subtle. 

Holtzmann closed her eyes for a brief moment; the weight of the pack was almost too much for her to stay on her feet. “Ah, no. I totally did. But if none of you are into that, it’s fine. Offer rescinded.” 

That hole in the floor would be really welcome if it could just open up and let Holtzmann fall into it right about now.

It was Abby’s turn to clear her throat, and she looked seriously at Patty and Erin, as if willing them to back her up as she spoke. Holtzmann found she was holding her breath for what seemed to be the final verdict on whether she’d crossed a line. 

“Holtzy, it’s not that we’re not flattered that you’d want to... how did you put it?”

“Marry the shit out of all of us and have little ghostbusting babies,” Patty put in. 

“And something about a big fucking bed? Or fu—ahh— something _ in _ a big bed?” Erin cleared her throat once again and made as if to unzip her jumpsuit, then stopped, cheeks pink. 

“I just...” Holtzmann whispered. “You know I love you gals. I’ve said that. I meant it.”

“And we love you too, Jillian.” Abby’s voice was soft, but hearing her first name made Holtzmann wince. “Just, maybe not...”

That was too much. Holtzmann turned on her heel and headed directly out the door of the lab, not stopping to take off any gear, not knowing where she was headed. Not caring. 

She slid down the firepole, dumped her pack against the car, and headed out the door, tears blurring her vision of the sunny street outside. 

 

—  
  
  


It was Patty who found her, an hour later, hunched in a corner booth of Zhu’s restaurant. They all hated the food there — except Abby for some masochistic reason — but they got free appetizers since they’d closed Rowan’s portal, and Holtzmann had a weakness for crab rangoon. Even shitty crab rangoon. Which this was. 

“These are too salty,” Holtzmann muttered as Patty reached for one, after having slid into the booth facing her.

“You sure that’s not you and your...” Patty waved vaguely at Holtzmann’s face, then concentrated on dipping her rangoon into one of the bowls of sweet and sour sauce that Holtzmann asked for with each order. By now she was on the tail end of her third, and the table was crowded with dishes.

Holtzmann wiped at her cheeks quickly — petulantly, if she was being honest — and sniffed loudly. Patty, still not looking up, handed over a handkerchief. Holtzmann felt her neck heat up, but she took it and blew her nose as gently as she could. 

Through the cloth, she mumbled, “I’m not— I’m fine. It’s fine. I know I’m bad at this stuff and I didn’t give any warning. Any sign that I’ve been... I dunno.” She finally moved the handkerchief away from her face and set it on the table, focusing on her hands, wishing she didn’t feel trapped. Not with Patty of all people. Conversations like this just made her feel inadequate. 

“Everything’s fine, Holtzy. You didn’t do anything wrong. We all love you and we’re glad you’re part of the family. In fact, you the one who  _ made _ us a family. You said it first, after all.” There was a smile in Patty’s voice and she was doing that thing where she bent her head to try to get into Holtzmann’s line of vision. 

She looked up at Patty for a moment, then her gaze flinched away again. There was too much sincerity, too much fondness there to not be painful to look at. 

“I don’t want your pity, Tolan.”

“Good, because I’m not here to give you any, geez.” Patty popped the rangoon into her mouth with a defiant gesture and chewed fiercely. Holtzmann couldn’t help staring until she swallowed and spoke again. “Ain’t nothing to pity you for, baby girl. Love is a good thing.”

“Yeah, but there’s love and then there’s  _ love. _ ” Holtzmann picked up a rangoon and broke off a corner. She put it in her mouth so as not to make a mess, but she couldn’t imagine swallowing it.

“Are you saying you’re  _ in love with _ all three of us?” Patty sounded incredulous, but her voice was distinctly lacking in judgement. Holtzmann’s eyes became wet again.

She shrugged, trying to offset the strange, disquieting weight of the truth. “Yeah? I dunno. I think so. I just...” She sniffed again, only partially to gain time. “You’re all so amazing. And I’m...”

“Also amazing. The most amazing,” Patty interrupted, not quite getting it. Holtzmann was grateful nonetheless, and if her hands hadn’t been greasy from tearing apart the damned rangoon, she would have touched Patty’s forearm, braced across the table.

“I don’t know how to do this, Patty. I’ve never done it before.”

“Fallen in love?” It was Patty who reached over to touch Holtzmann, but only for a moment. Holtzmann froze for the duration, just so she could concentrate on the gentleness of it.

“No, been a part of a group of amazing women who are all badasses, and also the sweetest friends ever. I just...” She put the soggy center of the picked apart rangoon into her mouth, and immediately regretted it. Mumbling around the mush, she said, “I’m having a lot of feelings. Which is weird.”

“Good weird? Bad weird?” How was it Patty could be so concerned about such stupid bullshit? Holtzmann didn’t want to bother her with this stuff, but she seemed interested. Ready to help. Kind.

Just too damned good. Holtzmann didn’t deserve any of this.

She managed to swallow, then sighed. “The feelings are good ones, they’re just odd. Not normal. I dunno what to do with them.”

“Feel them. That’s what they’re for.” Patty smiled, and Holtzmann’s heart swelled, warmth flowing through her as if Patty had turned on a low-level electric current. Her guts felt like heating coils.

She nodded, as if she understood how, and wiped her fingers on a napkin before touching Patty’s elbow. “Thanks. I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, I hope you aren’t uncomfortable with the fact that I have them. Feelings.”

“Nah.” Patty’s smile turned up a couple notches, and Holtzmann’s heart sped up. “We’ve all got ‘em. Just gotta figure out what they mean.”

Holtzmann couldn’t tell if Patty meant in general, or between the four of them. And she couldn’t find a non-awkward way to ask. 

“But there’s no rush on that,” Patty said, dusting off her crumby fingers. “Let’s go home. It’s movie night, you know.”

Holtzmann pushed the last of the crab rangoon away from her and picked up her goggles. She took a deep breath as she donned them, promising herself she could do this. She could function in a way that approximated normal behavior around her team, even with all these feelings.  _ And _ the prospect of them thinking she’d reached critical levels of strange. But there was nothing new about  _ that _ situation. 

“Yeah. Lez go.”

 

—  
  


Holtzmann knew she was dragging her feet as they climbed the steps to the third floor living quarters. And she knew that Patty knew she was doing it.

“Come on. It’s Abby’s turn to pick the movie, so you know it’s gonna be weird. And you like weird.” Patty nudged her, not too gently, and she appreciated the roughness — the normality of it — more than she could explain.

“I do. It’s true.”

“So do I, baby,” Patty said, with a strange, sideways smile. If Holtzmann didn’t know better, she would think Patty was flirting with her. But that couldn’t be right.

Tearing her eyes away so as not to look like a staring idiot, Holtzmann cleared her throat and muttered, “Good. Good to know.”

“Hey,  _ there _ you are!” Abby called delightedly, almost urgently as they stepped into the kitchen. She was blocking the door to the rec room, and she looked a little manic. “Just in time! Erin’s, um, changing into her pjs. Maybe you should too?” She looked at Holtzmann’s jumpsuit and boots, then glanced anxiously at Patty, giving her a small nod. 

Patty nodded slowly back. “Uh... yeah. Let’s take a minute to get all ready, and uh... I’ll make popcorn! Then we can all go in together and... watch the movie.” She looked at Holtzmann as if this was a plan she’d just thought up. 

“Okay....? Sure. I’ll get out of my busting gear. Be back in a jiffy.”

“Take your time!” Patty and Abby both called cheerfully as Holtzmann headed down the corridor.

She shook her head as she entered her closet of a bedroom — she’d taken the smallest one since she had the whole second floor as her lab. It took about two minutes to fling off her ghostbusting clothes and toss on a t-shirt and sweatpants, but the whole time she worried about what was up with Erin. 

Maybe she’d been skeeved out by Holtzmann’s proposal and wasn’t comfortable sharing space right now? She was definitely the one of the group that seemed most invested in being seen as hetero; whether she was or not, Holtzmann couldn’t tell. As with everyone she liked, Holtzmann assumed Erin was queer — probably bi and not that comfortable with it yet. But maybe that was a fallacy, and Holtzmann had fucked up a lot more than she’d originally estimated.

Or maybe everything was fine with Erin, and Abby was feeling really weird about Holtzmann professing her love to all of them. For a long time it had been just the two of them working closely together, and maybe Abby was feeling jealous? Or, probably she didn’t feel as strongly as Holtzmann, and she was feeling guilty about that. 

Dammit. This feelings shit was so complicated. 

She couldn’t really dawdle in her room — there wasn’t anything in there to tinker with — so she sucked it up and headed back to the kitchen, wishing she had something to do with her hands, hoping this evening wouldn’t be as excruciating as her most extreme calculations predicted. 

Patty had changed into a velour tracksuit, which always looked the most pettable, and Holtzmann had to cross her arms over her chest to keep from touching. She leaned against the fridge and watched Patty at the stove making popcorn the old fashioned way. She was explaining to Abby that it always tasted better this way, even though she was clearly preaching to the choir. Abby had a thing about microwaves, which was hilarious to Holtzmann given the radiation from all the equipment they worked with and experimented on every day. 

When the last bowl of popcorn had been filled, Abby asked, “You ready?” in a voice that was clearly too big for the space. A muffled noise came from behind the door to the rec room, and Abby and Patty glanced at each other as they all three picked up bowls and cups and napkins and a two-liter of cola. 

The rec room was dimly lit, with the space in front of the TV lit from the static screen. It was paused at the beginning of some sci-fi B-movie from the 70s or 80s and Holtzmann couldn’t hold back a snort of amusement. 

Erin seemed deflated by the noise, because she made a little awkward flourish with her arms, and her voice was self-conscious when she said, “Ta-da! I hope you like it.”

The movement drew Holtzmann’s eyes to the couch — or to where the couch had been. Now there was what looked like a king-sized bed, possibly bigger, covered in pillows and comforters. Erin, who was wearing matching pjs — a wide-necked t-shirt and shorts — dropped a curtsy and added, “After you, madam.”

Holtzmann stood stock still for a good ten seconds, gaping at the bed. This was very nearly exactly what she had been picturing in her fevered, excitable brain when she’d blurted out those  fateful words that had threatened the stability of the team. And here, instead of ostracizing or avoiding her, as she’d half-expected, the gals had welcomed the idea of... well, of what exactly? She hadn’t really known, herself, except that it felt like the natural evolution of her desire to be close to them.

She looked around at each of her teammates, trying to judge what this gesture could possibly mean. Her brain was working in top gear while the rest of her just wanted to dance with glee at the feeling of acceptance that overwhelmed her. 

Time to follow Patty’s advice and just feel the feelings, and not worry about anything else. 

She pumped her fists into the air, then launched herself at the bed, landing squarely in the middle — the bounciest part. Then she waved her arms at the rest of them and yelled, “Come on! Come in, the cotton’s fine! We’ve got a bed! Get in it!”

The rest of the team laughed, and Erin curled up in one corner as Patty and Abby put down the bowls of popcorn to climb onto the mattress, and Holtzmann opened the cola to start filling cups. 

“I’d like to make a toast,” she said, and Erin groaned.

“Please, let’s hold off on talking about marriage and babies again for a while,” she said with a half-laugh.

Holtzmann’s cheeks heated up as she passed Erin a cup of soda. “Okay, but still.” Erin gave her a half-exasperated, half-fond look, and Holtzmann took it for permission to continue. She passed Patty and Abby their cups, then cleared her throat as she filled her own. 

“I’ve talked about family and friendship and love, and yes, marriage and babies, but I just want to say that...um...” 

This wasn’t the way she should have started. Dammit.  

“...Ah, maybe let me make the first toast, huh?” Abby nudged Holtzmann, who gave her a nod and let out a heavy breath. “Okay, so... The thing about being a team is that we trust each other. Like today when we’d got the ghost in our proton streams and Holtzmann had to look away long enough to get the trap out and set. She trusted the three of us to hold the ghost while she was busy with that, and we did.”

Abby looked around the circle before she continued. “And we all trust her. A  _ lot. _ ” She chuckled. “That she’s making us the safest, most effective equipment to take on these ghosts.”

“Well, ‘safest’ is debatable. But most effective...” Erin gave Holtzmann a thumbs up. It was the best combination of awkward and adorable. Holtzmann grinned at her. She was a smart one.

“Anyway,” Abby went on, “We also trust Holtzmann with our selves. And not just Holtzy, but all of us, with each other. That’s how we’ve gotten so close, and why we work together so seamlessly. I know you all don’t just trust me, but you care for me, and I could never feel more at home than I do with you three.” She held up her cup to each of them and looked them in the eye. They each did the same to her. 

“So, Holtzmann, my point is, we all care about you and we don’t just want you safe, we want you happy. If having a big fucking bed where we can all hang out together does that for you, then I for one say: bring on the sleepovers!” 

“Hear hear!” Patty said, and clinked — well, bumped — her cup against Abby’s, then Erin’s, and lastly, Holtzmann’s. “I’m all for it. I love you ladies so much, and we’re such a good team. I say there’s no such thing as too close when it comes to us!”

“Well, maybe there is a _ little _ such thing, but not much." Erin tried to laugh. "Really. I just...” She scrunched her nose, but Abby cut in. 

“You aren’t there yet. That’s fine. Take your time, Erin. We’ll be here.” 

Holtzmann, who had been sort of writhing in happiness since Abby started her toast, all squirmy and grinning too wide, stopped still for a moment and tried to understand Abby’s words. She couldn’t get her brain in motion because the heating coils in her stomach were back on high, so she just winked at Erin, whose ears were bright pink. Maybe she was feeling all warm inside too.

“Okay. I can do this. Lemme try again,” Holtzmann said as she sat up straighter and held up her cup. “We could discuss the many types of love all night, but the upshot is, I’ve found my life’s purpose with you — all of you — and whatever type you want, I’ll give. I’m distinctly aware of how lucky I am to have found all of you, and I want to honor that trust we've built.” She nodded to Abby, then turned to Erin. “And to care for each of you the best way I can.” She bumped Erin's cup with her own, then startled slightly as an arm wrapped around her neck and pulled her close.

“That's my Holtzy,” Patty said, and pressed a kiss to her cheek. Holtzmann felt her face and her stomach heat up.

“ _ Our  _ Holtzy,” Abby said, nudging her cup against Holtzmann’s. “All right, now come on. This movie isn't going to watch itself.” She leaned over the edge of the bed and brought the popcorn on board, then made a grabby motion at Erin, who passed over the remote. “Let’s do this thing.”

As she pressed play, everyone settled into comfortable positions against each other with laps full of popcorn bowls and mildly precarious nests for drink cups. Holtzmann couldn’t remember ever being so happy. 

  
There wasn’t anything wrong with having a lot of feelings if they were all the good kind. Categorizing them could wait. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Holtzmann in Love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9100858) by [RsCreighton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RsCreighton/pseuds/RsCreighton)




End file.
